Sleep: A Learned Skill, A Mastered Weapon

Dreams. That's what I love the most about sleeping. A welcome break from reality maybe, or just the randomness of the plot twists. Shifting from paragliding off a cliff with the love of your life firmly strapped in front of you, to your 27 year old self writing an algebra exam at your former high school. I love dreams but not sleep, and the former seems to work out perfectly for me. As soon as my upper and lower eyelids touch each other involuntarily, I'm found in an alternate earth with knowledge and memories that I never had. And then I wake up, back in the real, wondering what all that meant. But the greatest thing about dreams is seeing it happen in real life and realizing that you already dreamed it. Fascinating. I once dreamed a costly heartbreak, with me being the breaker of the heart and the bearer of the cost. Of course, the dream was as figurative as it could be, but I know that the only reason why I didn't see it coming was because I didn't pay attention. Though it's hard to pay attention when you dream every sleep. Curating dreams will do a lot for my creativity but that feels like it would be slave work. For now, I dream every night and I write them down sometimes.

It wasn't always like this. I can't split my sleep life into three: dreams, no dreams and forgotten dreams. I dreamt a lot as a kid. Mostly nightmares. Occasionally, sexual dreams. I wasn't abused or anything. I was just a perv (I kid). Adolescence came without dreams. It was definitely the tag team of school stress and puberty that darkened my nights. I resumed my midnight adventures after my undergrad. But by then, sleep was already the enemy of my night. I never had much sleep as a kid, maybe because my mum never let us sleep with the lights off, but I would be the only one awake for hours. This continued till I was an adult and I think it's just the way I am. If get five hours of sleep, I'm okay for the night, but I usually never start before midnight and when I do I wake up before 4am. Sometimes it gets so bad that my morning alarm reminds me how far into the night I have gone without sleeping. Though I dream as soon as I sleep, that kind of sleep gives the worst dreaming experience and almost no dream memory. I literally wake up and remember just one blurry screenshot of the entire dream (that could have been another avoided heartbreak).

Experience has always been the best teacher and when you refuse to learn from it you get even more experience; it's relentless. In 2021, experience forced me to learn how to sleep at night. It was seven months of graduate school restricted to Zoom/Teams calls and endless nights of grinding out coursework to beat crazy deadlines that completely destroyed my circadian rhythm. I still brag about once staying up for a whole 30 hours and sleeping only two hours at a time for the rest of that week. Soon, I started sleeping at 6am every morning, every day. At first, I would lie down on my bed for two hours after midnight before giving up and turning to Amazon Prime video. Later, I gave in and started Prime video at midnight. It became even more ridiculous when I started working part time and I had to be at the office by 9am three times a week. Screenshot dreams. Sleep deprivation. Back, neck and head aches.

The solution was very simple. But I enjoyed watching Mad Men every night. I was a little more than mildly addicted to this night life. So, despite already knowing what I had to do, it was hard to implement. It wasn't until I fell in love at the end of graduate school that I realized I was living for two and I had to be more responsible. Then I implemented my night routine. Shut down all electronics at 11pm, take a shower, read a book till my eyelids meet and I wake up in a dream. It's extremely effective, and useful if sleep is the priority. And it has an ironic philosophic twist to it. To visualize and achieve your dreams, you need good sleep. No, staying up late is not because you're working hard. It's because you have poor planning and time management. It's the reason why I'm writing this at 2:57am now. But then, I've become so comfortable with late nights and deadlines that it motivates me and makes ideas flow better. I don't have an answer to that yet. Hopefully, I will develop a better creative process this year. Maybe I should write my dreams every morning and use that as creative fuel. So, it's two things then:

1. Shut down electronics by 11pm, read a book, sleep.

2. Write down your dreams every morning when you wake up.

"The evening and the morning, makes the day."